Feds bust South Beach club operators in sexy 'B-Girls' case

April 6, 2011|By Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald

Sexy Eastern European women dubbed "B-Girls" seduced touristy businessmen at a half-dozen South Beach nightclubs, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges on their credit cards for expensive bottles of champagne and other booze without their knowledge, federal authorities said Wednesday.

FBI agents arrested 17 men and women, mostly from South Florida and Eastern European countries. The club operators allegedly hired the women as "Bar Girls" to lure as many as 88 visiting businessmen into the Washington Avenue clubs to rack up the charges on their credit cards — sometimes by forging signatures on receipts, according to an FBI criminal affidavit.

One victim was charged $43,000 on his credit card, the affidavit said. One bottle of champagne cost $5,000.

In return, the B-Girls pocketed 20 percent of what they brought in and the private club managers kept 10 percent of the take, the affidavit said.

The FBI carried out the undercover investigation by deploying an agent who was able to infiltrate the alleged crime ring by posing as a "corrupt police officer working off-duty" as a bouncer or doorman.

The 17 defendants who operated the clubs are charged with wire fraud, prosecutors said. They are scheduled to have their first appearances in Miami federal court Wednesday afternoon.

"This scheme used women from Eastern Europe to lure and defraud out-of-state businessmen and tourists," U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said in a statement. "This scheme preyed on our tourists and gave our tourism industry a black eye."